Who is Nina Sanders? All we know about ex-Blackhawks employee suing team over sexual assault and fraud

Nina Sanders, a Native American woman, is suing the Chicago Blackhawks for breach of oral contract, fraud and sexual harassment. She is a curator of historic and contemporary Native American art, a writer and a cultural consultant. Additionally, she is also a senior fellow at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago.

Nina Sanders grew up in the Apsaalooke reservation, also called the Crow reservation, located in Garryowen, Montana. The Crow is a Missouri Valley Soiuan language, spoken by the residents of Crow Nation in the southeastern Montana region. The Crow populations constitute one of the largest populations of American Indian languages with 4,160 speakers, per the 2015 US Census.

Nina Sanders belongs to the Whistling Water, Bilikooshe clan of the Apsaalooke. The Apsaalooke have ten clans which are clubbed into five phraties. Sanders belonged to the second phratry, which consisted of the Whistling Waters, Bilikooshe, and the Bad War Deeds, Ashkapkawiia clans.

As of August 2021, Sanders lived and worked in O'ga P'ogeh Owingeg (Sante Fe), New Mexico. She mentioned the area is the current and ancestral land of the Tewa people, on the website indigenousgoddessgang.com

Sanders graduated in 2015 with a dual degree in American Indian studies and anthropology at Arizona State University. She went on to collaborate with institutions such as the National Museum of the American Indian and the Indian Arts Research.

Speaking to Chicago Magazine in 2020, Nina Sanders said that her connection to her ancestral roots was cut when she was forced to abandon the Apsaalooke language for English after entering the American public school system. Sanders disclosed she was punished in school for speaking her native language, and said:

“We would be put in separate rooms or sometimes get spanked by the principal. We were not allowed to practice our religion. And our history was not in the school’s history books.”

Sander was the curator of the Apsaalooke Women and Warriors exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago from 2019 until 2023. Through the exhibit, she was committed to reshaping and mending the way that the Native American culture is perceived and displayed to the general public.

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"I feel abused, traumatized, used": Nina Sanders opens up about her sexual assault and fraud allegations against Chicago Blackhawks

Nina Sanders filed a lawsuit on May 14, 2024, against the Chicago Blackhawks and its charity wing, and accused them of breach of oral contract, fraud and sexual harassment and violation of the Gender Violence Act, among others. She opened up about her journey with the organization and explained the reasoning behind her lawsuit in an exclusive interview with CBS Chicago.

Sanders was hired by the organization in 2020 and in 2021 fixed a meeting between the team and the Black Hawk tribe, the Sac and Fox nation, which had previously opposed the use of Black Hawks as a logo.

In August 2021, the Chicago Blackhawks organization and the Sac and Fox Nation formed a partnership, followed by the tribe reversing their stance on the logo and showing support for the organization's use of the Blackhawks logo. That same year, the tribe was gifted a $250,000 decommissioned Black Hawk helicopter and an additional $100,000 in grants, according to CBS's Dave Savini.

Nina Sanders claims she was sexually harassed in 2022 by a man working at the Blackhawks organization. Per the lawsuit, he is accused of "inappropriate sexual advances," touching her "without her consent", and also sending "sexually explicit videos" on Snapchat.

"I feel abused, traumatized, used," Nina Sanders said

According to Sanders' lawsuit, she had verbally reported two other incidents of women being groped by men working with the Hawks organization. Sanders claimed that the allegations were not investigated, and attempts were made to silence her by moving her out of the United Center to a different role.

The lawsuit filed by Sanders claims Danny Wirtz, son of former chairman Rocky Wirtz, and the Chicago Blackhawks organization committed fraud by misrepresenting their promises of changing the Blackhawks logo among other initiatives, to convince Sanders to take the job.